When Willie Belle Pruitt met me, she saidYou’ve got the picture of Jesus in your faceBut Jesus! The pictures I had in my headThe hoses … the dogs … moments of fire and graceWhat happened once in BethlehemHappened again in BirminghamThe innocent children deadNow sometimes a name hurts worse than a stoneSometimes a bone breaks like a stickSometimes what happens happens aloneSuddenly life is cut to the quickO Willie Belle Pruitt, who buries your dead?Eyes untutored, hands unschooledSleeping on the floor of your sister’s shackYou rise from the shadows, pass the lilies of the fieldIn the black night of sorrow, a sparrow on the wingTo go to mass meetings, to march in the streets, to sing …They beat you. I cry out. I bleedFor I am bound to youJust like a treeThat’s stannding by the waterWe shall not be movedYour painIs my name, too

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Daniel Thompson was Poet Laureate of Cuyahoga County, Ohio (which includes Cleveland) from 1992 until 2004